The present invention relates to a semiconductor device and, more particularly, to a technique suitably used for a semiconductor device having therein a voltage generation circuit.
In a semiconductor device such as an LSI (Large Scale Integration) or the like, a reference voltage generation circuit for generating reference voltage is known. From the viewpoint of precision, the reference voltage generation circuit is required to have low dependency of semiconductor manufacture process and low temperature dependency. From the viewpoint of power saving, the circuit is also requested to operate on low power supply voltage. As the reference voltage generation circuit satisfying such a request, a band gap reference (hereinbelow, called “BGR”) circuit is known.
Patent literature 1 and non-patent literature 1 disclose examples of the BGR circuit. Patent literature 2 discloses a BGR circuit adapted to low power supply voltage.
On the other hand, the BGR circuit includes a bipolar transistor as a basic element. It is known that the temperature dependency of a base-emitter voltage of a bipolar transistor is non-linear (refer to, for example, non-patent literature 2). Non-patent literature 3 discloses a BGR circuit with improved non-linear temperature dependency of output voltage. Non-patent literatures 4 to 6 disclose a correction circuit for correcting the nonlinear temperature dependency in the BGR circuit of the patent literature 1 and the like. Further, non-patent literature 7 discloses a method of correcting the temperature characteristic by a current (IPTAT2) proportional to the square of the absolute temperature.